I think that your story proves my point. NOBODY can be sure that software is perfect. They sued Dow Corning out of business with pure junk science, and they are still destroying companies over the asbestos problem. They caused stagnation in the private aviation industry, and I believe, drove football helmet manufacturing overseas. There is no industry or company that can always be sure its products will be used safely. This could spell the end of the software industry in the USA. Have you forgotten which group is now the biggest contributor to the Democratic party? Heck, they'll sue over damage caused by terrorists! So what if hackers, using very clever means, broke into your computer system? You should have foreseen anything anyone might try. How you would like to pay millions in damage plus billions in punitive damages? If this sort of situation comes to pass, a very lucrative business would be blackmailing software companies. Imagine, we found a hole in your software. Pay us 10 million dollars or face billions in liability payments. And don't think there are not plenty of smart people, backed up by governments I suspect, who would become very adept at this sort of thing.
Joel On Sun, Jan 20, 2002 at 01:55:01PM -0800, Bill Campbell wrote: > On Fri, Jan 18, 2002 at 11:18:45AM -0500, Joel Hammer wrote: > >This must be the dumbest idea in a long time. > >This is like holding a builder liable because someone broke into his > >building by digging under the foundation or smashing a window. > >DUMB. > > Not dumb if the builder puts locks on doors that don't work or leaves > gaping holes in the building so that the triple-locked doors are worthless. > > On the other hand, we stopped marketing the accounting systems I developed > because of the potential liability problems. We had a situation where a > customer had five years of acccounting data on-line (wholesale furniture > using our integrated system), had a hard drive problem, then attempted to > make backups -- using the only good tapes they had, wiping out all their > backups. I had told them not to use those tapes, and warned them weeks > before that their hard drive was getting flakey so we could schedule a > replacement. We had done everything in our power to prevent the problem > from getting really critical, but that wouldn't have kept them from suing > Celestial and costing us a ton of money defending ourselves. BTW: I did > manage to get all their data off the system, and restored on another hard > disk in spite of their efforts to destroy it. > > Bill > -- > INTERNET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC > UUCP: camco!bill PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way > FAX: (206) 232-9186 Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820; (206) 236-1676 > URL: http://www.celestial.com/ > > ``It's time to feed the hogs'' > -- Unintended Consequences > _______________________________________________ > Linux-users mailing list - http://linux.nf/mailman/listinfo/linux-users > Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Archives,and Digests are located at the above URL. _______________________________________________ Linux-users mailing list - http://linux.nf/mailman/listinfo/linux-users Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Archives,and Digests are located at the above URL.
